I reject your reality and substitute my own

In which the House of Representatives throws a temper tantrum

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans on Wednesday began hurtling toward an unpredictable collision over the federal budget, as the House of Representatives planned to vote to strip money from the national health care law while the White House readied plans for a government shutdown.

That vote in the Republican-dominated House, expected later this week, will set the stage for a spending showdown likely to last for days. Next week, the House plans to unveil another measure aimed at delaying the law.

The new federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1, and unless Congress and Obama agree on a budget, much of the government will be out of business.

The new Republican plan, announced Wednesday, would finance the government but also defund implementation of the 2010 health care law. That’s expected to pass the House but stall in the Democratic-led Senate.

That’s the scenario for stalemate. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that the administration would not accept any delays to the health care law to avoid a shutdown.

The House plan is likely to be phase one of a weeks-long clash over the federal budget as Democrats look to keep the government open, restore spending cuts known as the sequester, and raise the debt ceiling to allow the government to borrow to pay bills already approved by Congress and incurred. The Republicans, while insisting they also want to keep the government running, look to kill Obamacare and lock in spending cuts.

So I was thinking about this because I got into a clash with a relative on the Internets who is outraged that Senate Democrats won’t capitulate to this nonsense and my thoughts to that are: Let’s say that when my wife and I got married, there were house rules in place. One of those rules is that I have to take out the garbage every Wednesday night. I don’t like this rule. I hate it. The garbage is smelly, dirty, and I work. When I get home, I want to relax, so I complain. I try repeatedly to get the rule changed, but my wife tells me that she does things she doesn’t like either under the house rules and she doesn’t want to add taking out the garbage to her already busy schedule.

So then I tell her, I’m not going to pay our mortgage, credit card bills or utilities unless you agree that I don’t have to take out the garbage.

Is there any rational person who wouldn’t call me a foolish, petulant child? Yeah. That’s your current House of Representatives.

Except, they’re not complaining about taking out the trash, they are, to remind you, complaining about the fact that the government will improve the general welfare of the nation by helping millions of uninsured Americans find insurance and helping millions more be able to afford it. Is the ACA perfect? No. But it is progress. If they gave a damn about those of us not cutting $100,000 checks to the party, they’d be working to fix deficiencies in the law instead of throwing a temper tantrum and threatening to shoot the economy in the process.